The Last and Yet
by c1araoswa1d
Summary: (Tumblr Prompt) Write a twelveclara fanfic based in In The Forest Of The Night, in which the Doctor is wrong about the solar flares and the earth is destroyed, therefore Clara becomes the last one of her kind.


He'd been wrong and it was as simple and as complicated as that.

The flames had danced over the trees, setting them ablaze, and that blaze should have ended there, except it ate through the trees and then scorched down over the Earth. They'd watched from a safe distance as the Earth's flesh turned black and it's blood bubbled, and he'd turned just in time to catch Clara before she fell into the abyss of space in a state of absolute horror.

The Doctor knew what was coursing through his companion now. He knew the cold streaming through her veins and the void snatching the air from her lungs and he knew too well the crushing pain of understanding in her single human heart. He knew the static that scrambled her mind and he understood the scream she released against the shedding of tears as he held her.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered, feeling an odd numbness in his limbs.

Clara collapsed into a sobbing heap, not listening to his words and not looking again to the charred planet that sat crackling with spots and lines of glowing red as the last of the flames fluttered over her surface. He watched Clara shake her head slowly, not bothering to cover the mess of her face or wipe at her nose or the edges of her mouth, both dripping and drooling as she cried uncontrollably.

All of her family. All of her friends. All of the people good or bad, he knew. The innocent children. They were all on her mind now. Over seven billion individual human lives. All of their suffering through the burning of those fires, she was feeling all of it and she was holding herself responsible. The Doctor knew that guilt well.

He expected the silence that came hours later. After she'd fallen asleep beside those doors and he'd closed them, picking her up to tuck her into a bed. When she'd sat in a daze for days, accepting little food or water, sleeping often, or simply staring at walls. He waited because he knew after the shock came the anger.

Her fists were like rocks, pummeling at him as she shouted, blaming him and then dissolved into muttering nonsense, eyes reddened and focused on the damage she was inflicting. His body would bruise, his eye and jaw would turn purple and be tender for a while, and he knew her hands would as well. Her voice would go quiet from an inability to yell any longer. It would be rough and it would burn and she would hide in the bowels of the Tardis. And then would come the sadness.

The melancholy that kept her in bed, curled up on her side, crying softly into her sheets until they smelled of days old sweat and bits of random food in various stages of decay. There would be periods of silence and there would come the echoes of her howls, drifting through the ventilation systems, or down hallways. The Doctor would simply nod and keep them on course, drifting through space because he knew eventually would come the acceptance.

"I'm sorry," she told him as she stepped onto the console, looking across it at him. "I know you didn't want this, nor did you anticipate it." She paused, and the continued, "I know it's not your fault and I know this hurts you just as much as it hurts me." Clara picked at her fingers as she told him quietly, "Earth was your home as well."

The Doctor watched her eyes drift to the screen in front of her, looking to the words in Gallifreyan as they shifted across it. He would teach her; he would teach her everything. He would show her the grandiose of space as no one aside from himself had seen it. He punched in coordinates and he toggled a finger in her direction so she'd lift a lever.

"This," he pointed at the console, "This is our home." He looked to her and stated, "You walk where I walk, you breathe where I breathe, you live where I live, and you are my people, and together we will never be alone."

She managed a small smile at his words. A small smile, he knew, of hope. One he saw more of each day as they began to travel again. They went through the stars and he could see the determination building. Clara wouldn't let what happened to her planet happen to another. She would take her humanity to the stars and spread it as far and as wide as she could. The Doctor felt his hearts jump when she took his hand and giggled, almost a year later because he knew what _could_ come next.

Her heart began mending and as time went on with them side by side, he knew nothing was impossible. Clara could pilot the Tardis alone, she could read the manuals in Gallifreyan, and she recognized the names of more and more planets and their inhabitants. He knew her human mind put a limit to how many she'd memorize, but she tried, making herself a book in which she catalogued and categorized every place they went.

She knew his name.

On a simple night when she'd walked into his bedroom wearing red robes he hadn't seen in too many years to count as he laid there in a t-shirt and striped pajama pants. She'd laughed like he hadn't heard since before Earth's demise and she'd teased, "I'm the Gallifreyan and you're the Human now."

"Humans indulge in impulses, do they not," he'd stated curiously, standing to leisurely cross the room, hands coming up to brush over her shoulders as he smiled and shook his head. The Doctor had wanted to make a joke because his impulses were telling him to disrobe her and taste the saltiness of her body until she shouted his name, and he realized she didn't know it. He laughed softly as her hands came up over his shirt, feeling his heartbeats pounding away nervously. He admitted, as calmly as he could, "I want you to know me, Clara. I want you to know all of me."

Her belly began to round with new life just as they reached a second Earthly year's time completed without Earth and he was in awe of her. Clara insisted they continue travelling and she insisted they continue helping wherever they could. "This," she'd explained, gesturing out at the twinkling lights of a billion stars in a galaxy, "This is our home and this will be our baby's home and as such, we're responsible for making it the best home for them."

She began to hum lullabies and learned new ones in his language and she spent too much time contemplating the name she would bestow upon the hybrid child growing inside of her. "It's important," she told him on an evening he'd groaned she'd thought on it long enough. "This baby is the first," she told him before laying her hands atop her stomach. "The first of their kind."

It was during those moments when he could see the red rimming her eyes just before she wiped at tears and looked away because he could remember, just as clearly as he knew she could, when she'd declared, "I don't want to be the last of my kind." But then, she wasn't.

They were on an outpost when they found them, a little group of liberated prisoners who'd managed to secure a small ship during their escape and were now travelling the galaxy doing odd jobs for supplies. "We're some of those abduction stories people laughed at," one of them said with an amused chuckle. They thought they might have found a way home when they spotted Clara, when she admitted that yes, she was human and yes, she was from Earth. And then she told them the bad news.

"We'll find a new Earth," they promised. "A new Earth for all the babies born after its death." Because, they informed her, they'd helped liberate quite a few little groups of humans. They were, themselves, rescued by humans taken before them from another ship.

That night the Doctor watched her cry – for the first time in a very long time – out of joy. He found a way to stay in contact with that group and they began a new quest: finding factions of humans, spread out through the universe, to point them all in the same direction of a planet the Tardis had offered the coordinates for. A new home, compatible to human life. A new Earth.

It was green in a way the Earth hadn't been in thousands of years, and they looked out at it from the Tardis, seeing the occasional ship drift through the atmosphere, speckled in red as it descended towards others already busy making homes and discovering the lands. Humans would start over, he knew, they would have their second chance and then they would reach out into the stars again and spread through the galaxy the way history insisted they would.

"New Earth," Clara declared on a laugh and he watched her left hand rub absently at her abdomen, knew it would be only weeks before they held their child. He warmed at the hope in her eyes, he understood that hope as much as he'd understood all of her pain and all of the conflicting emotions she'd felt in between. Now she knew not all was lost; she knew she still had ties to her people somewhere in the universe. He raised a hand and settled it against her blouse, feeling the tight skin underneath and the gentle tapping of a little foot or fist. He chuckled and kissed her temple and listened to her sigh.

Their baby was born early, as eager to emerge as they were to see them. They were born aboard the Tardis, just beside the console after an adventure they should have avoided. Clara's laughter was shrouded in the pain of knowing her child would never walk the ground she had as a child, but it was also teeming with the joy of knowing they would walk among the stars she had made her home as an adult.

The Doctor held the squirming child, still wet from their mother's womb, and he listened to those first angry screams as he held the infant up to her, whimpering excitedly, "Boy, Clara, we have a boy." He handed him into her trembling hands, seeing her cradle him closely to kiss at his wrinkled forehead as those tiny fingers grasped her cheek and neck.

He had two hearts thundering inside of his pale little chest that calmed as he moved within Clara's embrace towards a bedroom where she could sit and examine him. His cries turned to simple murmurs while she wiped him clean and kissed at each new bit of exposed skin, giggling as she ran a finger along each of his ridiculously small toes. The Doctor watched their newborn son, captivated by Clara's voice as she spoke soothingly to him; absorbing her love as she caressed him tenderly. The baby unleashed a simple screech that shuddered to an end before a second one escaped and Clara awkwardly shifted him to latch onto her breast.

"What's the grand name you've settled on then?" The Doctor asked her as he sat beside her, watching the boy mull over the nipple in his mouth before working out just how to suckle the milk from it.

"David Elliot Oswald, for my mum and dad," she told him gently. "For where I came from."

"And for me?" He gasped, watching her laugh.

Looking David over lovingly, she sighed, "You name the next one," then she added sharply, "Within reason."

"There'll be a next one?" The Doctor questioned softly, leaning into her momentarily and watching her blush.

Clara turned to look at him and she offered a shy smile and the simplest of shrugs. Then she turned her eyes back to the infant she held, a whole universe of possibilities held firmly within her arms and he knew she was thinking back upon the day she thought everything had ended. The day she was the last; the day she had no home; the day she had no hope.

Clara leaned into the Doctor and she sighed, "I never thought I'd find this peace again."

She'd been wrong and it was as simple and as complicated as that.


End file.
